Former Labour Peer Lord Nazir Ahmed Jailed Five & A Half Years For Child Sex Offences

British-Pakistani Lord Nazir Ahmed, who has carried out anti-India campaigns, was found guilty last month by the Sheffield Crown Court of sexual offences against two children.

Nazir Ahmed (Photo: Getty)

New Delhi: Former Labour peer Lord Nazir Ahmed of Rotherham has been jailed for five and a half years for sexually abusing two children in the 1970s, UK media reported on Friday.

British-Pakistani Lord Nazir Ahmed, who has carried out anti-India campaigns, was found guilty last month by the Sheffield Crown Court of sexual offences against two children, media reports said. 

The Sheffield Crown Court heard that the abuse happened in Rotherham when Ahmed was a teenager.

Ahmed was found guilty of a serious sexual assault against a boy and the attempted rape of a young girl, and also of one count of buggery. 

The two complainants are a boy and a girl. The charges against Ahmed relate to alleged incidents between 1971 and 1974. 

Justice Lavender, passing sentence, said that Ahmed's actions had had "profound and lifelong effects" on the victims, according to a BBC report. 

Lord Ahmed was tried under his birth name Nazir Ahmed. He attempted to rape the girl twice in the early 1970s, when he was aged 16 or 17, but she was much younger, the BBC report said.

During the same period, the sexual assault of the boy happened. At that time, the boy was aged under 11, according to the BBC report.

Ahmed, 64, had denied the charges, calling them a "malicious fiction". However, a phone recording of a conversation between the two victims in 2016 showed that the charges were not "made up", the BBC report said.

Quoting the judge, the report said that the offences were so serious that only a custodial sentence can be justified.

"Your actions have had profound and lifelong effects on the girl and the boy, who have lived with what you did to them for 46 and 53 years," the report quoted the judge as saying.

"The statements which they have made express more eloquently than I ever could how your actions have affected and continue to affect their lives in many different and damaging ways," the judge further said.

According to the report, the victim of the attempted rapes said that she had lived with "an overwhelming feeling of shame". She could not be named due to the nature of the offences.

In a personal statement read out in court, the male victim, who also could not be named, said: "I buried the abuse and carried it with me on my own for years and years. I feel shame because of what these men did to me."

Ahmed's political roots are in Rotherham, where he grew up and still lives. He was born in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. 

In 1969, he moved to the United Kingdom with his family to join his father who was working in steel factories in Rotherham.

Ahmed studied at Sheffield Hallam University. After that, he ran a chain of shops in his home town and became a property developer.

In 1998, Ahmed was appointed to the House of Lords by then-Prime Minister Tony Blair. Ahmed became one of the first Muslim peers to be appointed to the House of Lords. 

Ahmed, who projected himself as a crusader for the Kashmir cause, faced multiple allegations of sexual misconduct. 

In 2013, he resigned from the Labour Party.

In 2020, Ahmed resigned from the House of Lords. According to media reports, a House committee had recommended that he should have been expelled.